Last week, we shared a post by Laura in which she compared the language used in one of the new YM/YW lesson manuals, which we are to begin using in 2013. Here’s Laura’s look at the unit of lessons for October 2013: Becoming More Christlike. Laura writes:

Since the temple marriage lesson was bound to have some significant differences between the YM’s and YW’s versions, I figured it was only fair to take a look at a block of lessons that was more likely to have similarities. The first lesson in this unit is called “How Can I Become More Christlike?” No need for that content to be gender-specific, right?

Unfortunately, this side-by-side comparison similarly shows that there are differences in the way we speak to both YM and YW and their teachers, and those differences appear to be deliberately chosen and inserted.

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Most of these seem to me to be wording choices based on the fact that the YM hold the priesthood and the YW don’t, and possibly areas where the YM are expected to develop as leaders more than the YW. It seems like they are being pushed a little harder as potential missionaries. What else do you see?

Near the beginning of the lesson, I’m trying to figure out why the YW manual uses first-person pronouns: “Which of these attributes do I most need to develop…” while the YM manual uses 2nd-person pronouns: “Which of these attributes to you most need to develop…”

It was obviously an intentional choice, but I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. Is it just different editors applying their own personal preferences? Or are first-person pronouns somehow supposed to be more “feminine?” What am I missing?

Looking a bit more closely, the men who teach the AP lessons are asked, “What do you feel inspired to share with the Young Men?”

The women who teach the YW lessons are asked, “Which scriptures and talks will inspire the young women to develop Christlike attributes?”

Then men are given general instruction which asks them to rely on their own inspiration, whatever that may be.

The women are given specific, guided instruction which looks to specific non-personal references.

There are pros and cons to both approaches: The men’s approach gives more autonomy to the teacher, allowing him a very broad range of experiences and stories from which to draw. That could be good, or it could be the equivalent of playing basketball every Wednesday night as your Scouting/YM activity. The women’s approach gives specific guidance which could help focus a teacher’s thoughts and ideas, but it also reinforces the idea that she must rely on the words of others rather than her own life and experiences.

I noticed that – the guess I would hazard is that it started off the same (likely you) and then was reviewed by the corresponding presidencies. Pres. Dalton (who I love and admire for many reasons not the least of which is her calling out men and fathers in her conference talk) and her presidency perhaps wanted to individualize or personalize those questions and it certainly does that by using I. I wish Pres. Beck and his presidency would have caught the same thing and changed it to I.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the last post. My theory is that it is a case of different editors. I bet the YW committee reviewed/finessed a basic outline for the girls, and the YM committee reviewed/finessed a basic outline for the boys. I don’t imagine they compared the two versions side-by-side.

This doesn’t mean that the differences aren’t telling. But I imagine it’s not as intentional as it seems when we look at them side by side.

The most problematic issue for me is how the YM are encouraged to lead, while the YW are encouraged to ponder. Both pondering and leading are an important part of a life of faith for men AND women; I wish they’d both be encouraged to do so. Having said that, I actually don’t have as much a problem with this one as the last one (I think the subject matter in the other one got me as much, if not more, than the differences).

Hm. The Young Men are directed to write an outline for a talk. The Young Women are to draw a picture (create a Mormonad). Yeah, it seems like, especially with more Young Women potentially becoming missionaries, you’d want them to do the talk, develop the leadership skills, engage with Preach My Gospel, as the YM are instructed to do. Seems like YW leaders ought to just use the YM’s manual. That’s the conclusion I’d come to based on these comparisons. Having been a class president in a few different YW classes when I was a teenager, it sure would have been nice to have actual leadership opportunities, like the YM quorum presidents seem to have in these lessons.

I wish they would pull more from the YW side over to the YM side so I am glad they just didn’t take the YM’s version. The YW version has some great elements for helping emphasize becoming more like Christ and that is the purpose of all of this.

I agree there are some conducting elements (you could call them leadership if you want, but conducting is not the essence of leadership) that the YW with their class presidencies could do as well. I actually thought they were in some cases strangely placed – like at the end the YM lesson where the conducting person is encouraged to bear their testimony and invite the participants to act. For me that shouldn’t be who is conducting, but should be done by the person that is teaching.

For Preach My Gospel in this lesson and in the few others I have looked at I have found that generally both the YW and YM lessons use PMG similarly.

The most obvious explanation for the differences here is that the General YW and YM Presidencies got to adjust the lessons from the baseline that they started from.

I don’t think that we need to talk about how to become more Christlike differently – that is why I would like that aspect pulled into the YM’s lesson from the YW’s lesson, but two different people WILL have different perspectives on it as they put together a lesson outline and that is what I believe to be the source of the differences.

I know in many cases I am fighting a lost cause because where people want to see slight they are going to see slight, but just remember that different doesn’t have to mean anything about lack of equality or lack of empowerment or whatever else people try to read into it. Sometimes it is just different and that is all it is.

Sometimes different is just different. And sometimes it’s more than “just different.” You’re right that each of us will have a different perspective. For sure.

But it feels like the OJ trial to me at this point. Maybe one piece of evidence isn’t enough to convict. But when you start stacking up piece after piece after piece after piece, eventually the jury came to the conclusion that OJ was indeed guilty.

That’s how this feels. Sure, one lesson? one talk? one Ensign article? one program? Not a big deal. But when it’s thing after thing after thing after thing, then it feels like more than “just different.”

The difference does mean something, especially when put in this context where both the spiritual opportunities and the current leadership structure of the church is one where women aren’t treated or empowered equally within that structure.

I think the men on this comment page are being deliberately obtuse. They know that we are intended to become priestesses and yet, they choose to ignore our development in favor of pretending that acting in the Lord’s name upon the elements is always going to be their purview, alone.

Of all the lessons I’ve reviewed, this one is probably the closest to being the same for both Young Men and Young Women. While it still retains the infrastructure which specifically directs quorum presidents to take charge and lead the meeting (which means an adult is deferring to a teenager and fulfilling an assignment to teach), many of the stories and activities are the same.

I find the scripture selection process, and the summaries of the scripture passages themselves curious. For instance, why use “invitation” for the young women and “commandment” for the young men? If we’re picking and choosing scriptures, why the difference between which ones the girls get and which ones the boys get?

There are certainly differences in editing styles, and there’s a definite chicken-and-egg dilemma here: Do we speak differently to boys and girls because of our positions of being men/women, or do we speak differently to them in order to create different positions for men and women?

If there had been a general lesson outline prepared and the different editorial boards were told, “We want to make the YM/YW more Christlike, come up with a lesson plan,” those plans would not come out nearly identically word-for-word. Somewhere within that editorial process a decision was made to make language the same or different.

This is the effort to enact separate-but-equal. As we go through the lessons, we’ll find out if it is something that works or not.

If the adults use the same RS/PH manuals reading from the same scriptures and same stories, why do our children need separate sets of scriptures and stories and lesson manuals?

Oh, and why can’t we let our boys grow up to be the men Christ and our HF want them to be? We allow the girls to become the women Christ wants them to be. But why add the title of “priesthood bearers”? There is a greater sense of duty and responsibility connected with the idea of ordination. Is that liberating or stifling? Does it allow for more room for boys to grow up and be men or does it create a very defined box within which they must fit?

We’ve had several GC talks about not using the term “The Priesthood” to refer to the men in a particular group. And yet, here is a brand-new lesson defining males solely as priesthood holders rather than as men of God.

Is that distinction in language significant or not? I see it as an important distinction, but I’m a language nerd, if that’s not already apparent.

Thank you for your comments. I obviously am guessing like everyone else why the differences exist and can appreciate that others have different interpretations of the changes. I will say that I don’t believe that in the leading councils and committees of the Church that they are trying to promote sexism. I do believe that they are trying to teach and protect the doctrines of the Gospel as best as they can as mortal men and women. I do believe that the Proclamation is an important document for our time and I believe it should be taught. I believe that men and women are meant to be leaders in our time and both genders need to learn those skills.

I will say in my church callings there have been plenty of times where we have talked about the need to talk differently to men versus women about certain topics. With the women we needed to be careful how we asked them because they would do it and do so very diligently and determinedly (speaking about the women in our ward generally) and sometimes overwhelm themselves as a result. Where as the men we needed to take a different tone and be much more blunt about getting in gear.

And I would submit that part of the reason women “would do it and do so very diligently and determinedly” to the point of overwhelming themselves is because they have been socialized to do so. Not just within the church, but within North American society where we honor women who sacrifice themselves for their children and family, where we hold up as ideal the women who forego pursuits not directly related to motherhood (even when motherhood is a poor choice for any particular woman), where we encourage boys to rely on the girls and women in their lives to dress in a particular way rather than have the boys take responsibility for their own thoughts and actions, where we talk endlessly about what it means to “support the priesthood” and “magnify your calling.”

I don’t for a minute believe any person who leads the church is purposefully trying to subjugate women or be obstinately sexist or prevent girls from feeling like they are as important as boys. But despite the fact that Pres. Hinckley addressed that question (of girls’ worth) decades ago, girls continue to grow up in the church wondering if they are as loved or as important as the boys.

Why do girls wonder if they matter as much as boys? Because they are perceiving a message from their society that boys matter more. And part of that perception is created in the way we talk with and about the gospel as it relates to men and women. Another part of that perception is how we administer programs for boys and girls, men and women – as demonstrated in the explicit instruction to the adult men teaching the AP lessons that they are to “Let the Boys Lead.”

A boy who turns 12 is told – and shown – that he (or another boy) is in charge 50 times a year, every year from the time he’s 12 until he’s ordained an Elder. He develops the skills to conduct and lead a meeting (with guidance from his leaders as explicitly directed by church lesson manuals, manuals that are seen and studied every single week).

A girl who turns 12 is only told and shown that she (or another girl) is in charge if a YW presidency/adviser happens to decide that it’s good for girls to learn to conduct class meetings. There’s no explicit reminder that this is important in the girls’ development, and leaders are not expected or advised to show deference to YW class presidents.

By the time a boy graduates from high school, he’ll know he’s important: People defer to him, he’s learned leadership skills, he has duties and responsibilities and he regularly hears messages that people should honor his priesthood.

When is a girl deferred to? When does she serve in a visible capacity in front of the congregation? When does she hear messages about honoring herself? When does she hear of her spiritual power (rather than her immodest tempting power) over boys?

Stellar comment, Laura! (And again, great analysis!) Curriculum people don’t have to consciously be sexist for them to make sexist decisions about wording. And nobody has to tell YW that they are less important than YM when the very structure of the Church is shouting it so loudly.

@Laura C, great comment, and telling girls they are valuable doesn’t count (slaves were valuable, we’re talking about authority and equality), neither does telling them they are beautiful (so are sunsets). . .